We asked our first year Assistant Instructors how their first month of teaching has gone so far. Check out Amanda Tovar’s response!
Amanda Tovar, (she/her/ella), third-year PhD student in American Studies at UT. She is currently teaching a class titled “Radical Feminisms & Media.” We asked her how her first year is going so far and how his course embodies American Studies at UT. This is her response.
Radical Feminisms and Media provides an overview of the historical and contemporary experiences of women and femmes of color in media and popular culture. The course explores how women and femmes of color, activists, writers, musicians, visual artists, poets and so many others contribute so much to the feminist narrative within media and popular culture while existing on the margins of toxic masculinity, patriarchy as well as racism. The course content is drawn from various texts/media including, novels, testimonios, memoirs, short stories, poetry, histories, murals, paintings, films, music, theory, and many other forms of popular culture. The course began by situating the historical context of women and femmes of color and then moves on to address questions concerning labels such as gender and race. Throughout the semester the course intends to consider the ways in which race, ethnicity, genders, and sexualities underline the material we will be and have been analyzing while they create multiple experiences for women and femmes of color.
I really think—or rather hope—that my class is going well! I absolutely love my students and their critiques of the media that they consume that they bring into the classroom are always scathing HOT. Initially, I was very nervous, and I thought it was going to be difficult trying to convey the way the mundaneness of everyday life wields social AND political power considering older generations continuously degrade the millennial and gen-z generations. But they literally walked into the classroom ignited with passion and a great desire to share their thoughts and opinions on current and historical events and the ways it relates to the media they are consuming.
For a little taste of my class—imagine listening to Philadelphia based screamo punk band Soul Glo alongside Solange while reading Patricia Hill Collins Black Feminist Thought. Or reading Ariana Brown’s poem Nylon, Black, ’72 while listening to Joey Bada$$’s Land of the Free. Or watching TikTok’s on the “Hailey Bieber lip” trend (that we all know she appropriated from Latina women) alongside Bad Bunny’s new mini documentary that accompanies his El Apagón music video. Or reading Rupi Kaur’s poetry in Milk & Honey with Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House alongside the powerful memoir Know My Name authored by Chanel Miller. I mix and pair all the various mediums we dissect with academic readings of a wide range of disciplines to strengthen my argument and really drive home the interdisciplinary nature of American Studies.
Lastly, I believe this course embodies the spirit of American Studies at UT because it quintessentially advocates for the everyday life via media consumption within the strictly defined borders of the United States to be critically analyzed and historicized. Additionally, I emphasize that we do not consume media passively while demonstrating that there is somewhat of a ripple effect between media and the sociopolitical climate that we are currently existing in. And true to American Studies fashion, they can do their assignments with any methodological praxis and approach, à la Paulo Freire, that they wish!
